How to completely wipe an internal HDD before reselling?

MortgageBroker12Feb 17, 2014, 7:09 AM

Ok so I have an old 2006 WD 60GB IDE HDD and I've erased all of it's files and formatted NTFS and so it doesn't show any files on the drive anymore when I open the G disc but the drive is still showing in disk manager as 2 partitions: "47MB Healthy (OEM Partition) and then "(G) 55.84 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition)".

So my question is this: Have a successfully deleted any old data from this Drive so that no old personal data can be extracted from it? And also, can I delete the 47MB OEM partition so this is just a single Primary Partition or how does this usually work when reselling Hard drives? I am using this drive as a test as I am sure a 60GB hard drive will not yield a worth-while sales price but I just want to know what's the best way to completely and securely wipe a drive of all old software, OS and personal data? and show the HDD be broken into 2 partitions, a single partition or what before selling?

This is an old HDD I pulled from my computer I used in college back in 2006 so lord knows what sort of old crazy photos videos or personal folders/files have been deleted from the drive but the last thing I would want is for somebody to be able to bring those old files back to life somehow and be able to view them so any help on this matter would be much appreciated.

Use a program like Free Disk Wipe. Simply deleting a partition and reformatting will not erase your information. A program has to write over your files so as to replace them with new information. This is what a military grade software will do.